Local food pantry closes doors

Thursday

Jan 23, 2014 at 11:42 PM

Church member Ned Workman has been responsible for overseeing the food bank for the past two years, with the help of his wife, Linda, and a group of about 25 volunteers. He said it was not uncommon to distribute food to 200 or more families monthly.The cost of renting the truck was $200 a month, and the food cost an additional $600 each month. Workman said private donations and church bake sales were the sources of revenue to pay the $800 monthly cost.

Mary Barker

By MARY BARKERmbarker@cheboygantribune.comCHEBOYGAN — Cheboygan County has one less food pantry available to those in need with the recent closing of the Cheboygan Community Food Bank, which has been housed in the Cheboygan Community Wesleyan Church, 625 E. Sixth St., for the past four years.An array of factors including budgetary constraints; a lack of control over the type of food coming into the bank; and an inconsistency with the goals of the church were cited by church officials as reasons for closing the food bank.The Rev. Gregg Haskell, of Cheboygan Community Wesleyan Church, explained that the church took the food bank under its wings four years ago when one of its members who had a close contact with the East Michigan Food Bank convinced the board to use its facilities for a food bank program. The East Michigan Food Bank out of Flint is under the umbrella of the nationwide Feeding America program, which supplies food pantries throughout the United States. The local food bank received a truckload of food once a month and distributed it the next day."Through attrition here, the original founders of our food bank moved on, and it fell into the lap of some of our long-term members," said Haskell. "There have been some major struggles, particularly in the last six months, which led to us questioning the effectiveness of the program and how it is impacting what the church mission is all about."Church member Ned Workman has been responsible for overseeing the food bank for the past two years, with the help of his wife, Linda, and a group of about 25 volunteers. He said it was not uncommon to distribute food to 200 or more families monthly.The cost of renting the truck was $200 a month, and the food cost an additional $600 each month. Workman said private donations and church bake sales were the sources of revenue to pay the $800 monthly cost. "Our budget has been dwindling," said Workman. "We depended heavily on the bake sales and for the last five months we haven't been able to cover the cost. We have been getting under $200 on our bake sales. We did have private donations, but even with those we weren't making it. In the program's early going we had enough and then some."In addition, Workman said the local food bank officials had no say on what type of food it would receive on any given delivery."In the last four years it has changed a lot," said Workman. "We were getting a lot of bread, cakes, snack food. … It didn't seem to make a lot of sense."He said the East Michigan Food Bank did indicate in its original contract that the food delivered would be of a nature that people would not typically purchase at the store.There were cake mixes, donuts and a ton of crackers. One of the best things we got recently was a whole bunch of Starbucks coffee," said Workman. "We were even getting stuff that wasn't food. For example, we got a huge amount of single-dose cold sore packets. And I hate to say this, but in our last load there were four boxes on condoms. In the last three months the whole thing just went downhill."Workman said the church wanted the food bank program to be "more than just giving food away." "We wanted to have an impact in the spiritual realm as well," said Workman. "For eternity, we wanted to enhance relationships with God and with a lot of the people we were seeing, they were not working toward that goal."We decided we had to stop and re-evaluate the whole program. Who knows, we could do something again. Be it would need to have a much stronger direction." With the closing of the Cheboygan Community Food Bank, the county and surrounding area is left with food pantries at The Salvation Army and St. Thomas Lutheran Church, both in Cheboygan; Joy Fellowship Assembly of God, between Indian River and Wolverine on S. Straits Highway; and Church of the Straits in Mackinaw City. In addition, the Lord's Kitchen at the Cheboygan Nazarene Church, 221 North Bailey Street, offers lunch at no charge Monday-Friday. The kitchen opens its doors at 9 a.m. with coffee and sweets and social time. The meal is served between noon and 12:30 p.m. In addition, visitors can sign up to do their laundry at the church. When school is closed due to bad weather, the Lord's Kitchen also is closed. Salvation Army Business Manager George Olson said there has been a slight increase in traffic at the food pantry there since the recent closing of the Cheboygan Community Food Bank, but it remains to be seen what impact it ultimately have on the Salvation Army's food pantry. A spokesperson from St. Thomas Lutheran Church could not be reached for comment about any impact on its food pantry.